>This isn't really about teaching physics or math or >music or anything, is it Richard? This is about everyone >being the same. This is about that "middle ground" that >Alan proposes.

Exactly right. One of the clues that the education debate is ideology not science is their own references to JJ Rouseau and J Dewey, two hard core ideologues of centuries ago. And one of the clues that the debate is political not educational is Schoenfeld's sinister remark,

"Efforts must be made publicly to identify the extremists for what they are and to marginalize them."

Is this how science is done? Shades of the Climate Change email scandal, in which it was revealed that dissenters were defamed and their work suppressed.

One of the unspoken implications of the Education Mafia position is that, by "sameness", they mean everybody should be at the same high level. Of course, this is impossible, so they keep lowering standards. And, one of the fascinating results of this process, now several decades old, is that no matter how low the standards, they have still not achieved sameness.

How low must we go to achieve sameness? I predict we will never find out. I think society will collapse before we plumb the depths of educational degradation.